A man was kicked off a plane after making a joke that a flight attendant didn’t find funny.
A Southwest Airlines flight heading from Sacramento International Airport to Los Angeles had been delayed on the tarmac when the incident took place.
A maintenance light had come on and the plane was told it would be delayed again.
“It’s minor but they want to go back to the gate and check it out and see,” Peter Uzelac, a passenger on the plane, told via Fox 40.
Uzelac was headed from Sacramento to Austin, Texas, with a stop in Los Angeles
“You know, we’ve been burning fuel,” Uzelac told Fox 40.
By then, a few hours had already passed.
Flight attendants were handing out water when the man next to Uzelac made the joke to one of the flight attendants.
“He said something [like], ‘They should be passing out vodka because we’ve been waiting so long,’” Uzelac told Fox 40.
The comment upset the flight attendant.
“She came by and was like, ‘I don’t think that and I didn’t like your joke,’” Uzelac told Fox 40. “Then my wife tried to butt-in there and say, ‘Look it, we’ve been on this plane for hours.’ And she says, ‘Well, so have I, so get used to it.’”
After hours of delays, a man on Southwest Airlines flight from Sacramento International Airport (SMF) to Los Angeles was kicked off after he jokingly asked if water being handed out by a flight attendant was vodka. https://t.co/L4fSkadMdZ
— FOX40 News (@FOX40) May 11, 2019
Uzelac told Fox 40 that he then saw the flight attendant on the phone at the front of the plane. The plane turned back to the gate and Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies came aboard to remove the passenger who made the joke.
“And people started yelling then. In fact, people stood up. I stood up. People were saying this man didn’t do anything,” Uzelac told Fox 40.
The man was not charged with a crime.
Uzelac told Fox 40 that he filed a complaint against the flight attendant.
“If they have this in their records, you know, maybe it will prevent this from happening again,” Uzelac told Fox 40.
Southwest Airlines released a statement, obtained by Fox 40: “We regret any less-than-positive experience a customer has onboard our aircraft. We welcome over 100 million customers each year, and we aim to maintain the comfort of all while delivering Southwest hospitality. We will share this report with our Customer Relations Team.”
Earlier Southwest Incident
A couple that was aboard the 2018 Southwest Airlines flight that suffered a mechanical problem in midair, are suing the carrier for negligence, Sante Fe New Mexican reported.
The plane was headed from New York to Dallas when a metal fan blade came loose and hit the body of the plane, causing the plane cabin to depressurize and a passenger to almost get sucked out of the window. That passenger later died.
The lawsuit, from Albuquerque residents Andrea and Kevin Nelson, also involves the maker of the aircraft and its engine.
The lawsuit describes a moment where “the Nelsons witnessed in horror as the force of the depressurization pulled an innocent passenger partially through the shattered window and they watched as passengers risked their lives to pull the passenger back into the aircraft and attempted to save her life,” according to court documents obtained by the Albuquerque New Mexican.
The lawsuit also says that the situation caused a “whirlwind of airflow and airborne debris” inside the plane.
The plane was able to land without crashing.